Here are 5 features that got cut from the Windows 10 Creators Update

We got our first look at the Windows 10 Creators Update back in October of last year. At the event, Microsoft promised a lot of things — but not all of it is coming with the Windows 10 Creators Update on April 11. Microsoft had to cut a major feature and some slightly smaller features from the Windows 10 Creators Update for unknown reasons, which means we likely won’t get some of these features until the next Windows 10 update (codenamed “Redstone 3”) is released.

So here are the 5 features Microsoft removed from the Windows 10 Creators Update release:

MyPeople

Windows 10 was supposed to get a new people bar, known as MyPeople. MyPeople was actually one of the headline features for the Windows 10 Creators Update back when Microsoft initially introduced the update in October. In fact, the company spent a good 10+ minutes talking about MyPeople at the event. But unfortunately, MyPeople wasn’t ready in time for the Creators Update. Microsoft stated earlier this year:

“As we shared at our event in October, we’re excited to bring your people to the front and center of your computing experience in Windows with the My People experience. Our goal with Windows is to deliver experiences you’ll love and we’ve made the decision to hold this feature for the next major update to Windows.”

MyPeople, for those unfamiliar, is essentially a section in the taskbar where you will be able to quickly interact with some your most frequent contacts or people. You will be able to send messages, share files and emojis whenever you want — all from the taskbar.

On paper, the MyPeople feature seems pretty simple. But it actually isn’t that simple — and that’s likely caused by the limitations of the Universal Windows Platform. For one, Microsoft wants to integrate Skype, Outlook Mail, Xbox Live, Skype for Business and other third-party services into MyPeople. And getting all of this to work perfectly will require quite a lot of work. This is because MyPeople has one popup for each of the people on your taskbar — and you will be able to interact with them by switching between different apps. The view of these apps is also supposed to look different on the MyPeople popup when compared to the normal app view, which is presumably going to be complicated for Microsoft to implement.

Another small feature that’s actually pretty complicated is the “Shoulder Taps” feature — what this essentially does is show emojis from your contacts right on the taskbar.

MyPeople will probably arrive with Windows 10’s Redstone 3 release later this Fall, and Windows Insiders should be able to get their hands-on MyPeople a bit earlier.

OneDrive Placeholders (aka On-Demand Sync)

Placeholders in OneDrive were also expected to make a come back with the Windows 10 Creators Update. Microsoft announced back at Ignite 2016 that the company is working on bringing back OneDrive Placeholders to Windows 10, but this is something which will arrive with Redstone 3. At Ignite, Microsoft announced that the company will be renaming Placeholders to “On-Demand Sync” to make it much less confusing to users.

On-Demand Sync is a really useful feature which helps users save space. As you can see in the screenshot above, the files stored in OneDrive weighed in around 9GB, but the actual size on disk was only around 3MB which is really neat. Of course, this feature isn’t anything new as it was available back in the Windows 8 days. However, Microsoft removed the feature with Windows 10, but it’s finally coming back.

While this feature was not exactly expected to arrive with the Windows 10 Creators Update, people assumed that Microsoft will bring it with the update. But now, we can confirm that On-Demand Sync will indeed be coming to Windows 10 with the “Redstone 3” release unless the company decides to delay it again, of course.

Groove Music Maker

This is another interesting feature that got cut from the Creators Update. Now, Microsoft didn’t actually “announce” the new Groove Music Maker per se, but it was shown for a few seconds on the teaser video Microsoft released for the Creators Update. While we don’t have any official information regarding this new app, Groove Music Maker seems like a tool which will allow users to make music on their Windows 10 device. We are not too sure if this is supposed to be an app for professional music producer, so it will be interesting to see where Microsoft takes Groove Music Maker in the future.

It is possible Microsoft may release Groove Music Maker as a standalone app as it likely doesn’t need to be tied to a whole OS update. We’ll let you know when there’s more information on Groove Music Maker, but for now, it remains a mystery.

Windows Capture 3D

Another cool demo Microsoft showed off at the Windows 10 event last year was the new Windows Capture 3D experience. With this new app, users would be able to capture objects from the real world and turn it into a 3D object using their smartphones. At the event, Microsoft stated that the company will bring the new Windows Capture 3D to Windows 10 Mobile devices “soon” and it will also be coming to iOS and Android in the near-future. But in an exclusive statement to MSPoweruser, Microsoft confirmed that it won’t be bringing the new feature with the Creators Update — instead, it will arrive “in the future”:

The capability to capture objects from your world in 3D using the camera on your phone is not one of our Creators Update features. As we shared in October, we envision the functionality being available across platforms, and we’re working to bring to mobile devices in the future.

An improved Action Center

We exclusively revealed last year that Microsoft is working on improving the Action Center in Windows 10. In the teaser video for Creators Update, Microsoft even confirmed the new design changes coming to the Action Centers with the Creators Update. As we reported, Microsoft is working on making some key improvements to the Quick Actions are in the Action Center — most of which are design-related changes.

Unfortunately though, the changes didn’t make it to the Creators Update. It is possible these changes got canceled, as they don’t really add any extra new features apart from tweaking the design (which looks pretty nice). But if Microsoft is still working on the changes, they will, once again, likely appear with the Redstone 3 release.

So there you have it, these are some of the biggest new features that were supposed to come to Windows 10 with the Creators Update but didn’t make it at the end. Hopefully, we’ll get these features with the upcoming Redstone 3 release that’s set to arrive this Fall. In the meantime, you can take a closer look at all the new features that are actually in the Creators Update on our hands-on video below:

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